Verizon's recent strike holds up FiOS installations

Even as Verizon (NYSE: VZ) scales back its Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) roll out, the recent two week strike by 45,000 of Verizon's wireline union workers drove the service provider to suspend the installation of new orders of FiOS service because it had to divert its attention to maintenance, resulting in a backlog of 100,000 orders by the time the employees returned to work.

During the strike, some customers were told were told their service might not be installed for as long as four months, depending on the length of the strike by members of Verizon's union workers represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). The service provider decided to not take new FiOS orders when the strike began.

In place of the union workers, Verizon's management employees covered the maintenance workload. Now that the union workers have returned to work, Verizon said they are making progress in reducing the FiOS installation backlog.

While the two unions returned to work, they have yet to finalize a new contract. Right now, union workers are working off their existing contract.

Separately, Verizon said that trouble reports spiked in nine northeast and mid-Atlantic states following Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.

As expected, downed trees, power outages and flooding not only drove up the increase in trouble reports, but also delayed Verizon field technicians' ability to fix damaged network infrastructure.

But even after Verizon's union workers returned to their job, they went on the attack accusing Verizon of delaying repairs on the wireline network as a way to deny them of overtime hours.

Verizon believes that trouble reports will return to normal levels in these states in the next two weeks.